


Vulpes Venari

by Dardrea



Series: Dulce Periculum [1]
Category: Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim
Genre: Bretons, Cyrodiil, Eventual orc boyfriend, F/M, Gen, Imperial City, Orcs, Orsimer - Freeform, Rated t for language and violence, Set in the Imperial City during the events of Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, Teratophilia, The Gray Fox - Freeform - Freeform, Thieves Guild
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-02
Updated: 2019-03-02
Packaged: 2019-11-07 23:53:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 19,022
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17970467
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dardrea/pseuds/Dardrea
Summary: Spar's a Breton thief living in the Imperial City in Cyrodiil. The Great War is long done and the Aldmeri Dominion practically run the Empire. Undercurrents of discontent are stirring, war is threatening again in the far corners of the realm, but that all means little to her when her day to day is spent just trying to keep herself fed and out of trouble. When she falls for an orc in the city guard and finds herself under the thumb of the lord of the Imperial City's underworld, staying out of trouble is no longer an option. Hopefully she's as good a thief as she thinks she is.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> (Fox Hunt)
> 
> Disclaimers... uh... I don't know latin, the lore for these games is massive and contradictory, and this is very unbeta'ed, but I had fun writing it anyway?

The Breton’s hand was almost to the skinny merchant’s pocket when the larger, grayer hand grabbed her.

She’d been _right_ there, no one could have known her intention, her stumble had been perfect, her fumbling theatrical and deceptive, and she was angrier at the interruption than she was concerned.

Not letting any of that show, Spar looked up, to her right, but up; her most guileless, confused, ever-so-slightly frightened expression making her brown eyes wider as she searched her tall captor’s expression. After all, he hadn’t caught her in the act. Quite.  

The orc only shook his head. He was shaved clean, his jaw and his head, and craggy-faced in a stern and handsome way, but he was smiling, his lips twisted wryly around those tusks. Even though he wore legion red and the sash of a city guard, he wasn’t humorless about it.

“Excuse me?” she mumbled, giving her voice a subtle waver, not letting her mask slip for a second, not for his uniform and not for his beguiling smile.

“It’s a pretty hand, little one. Don’t make me have to cut it off.”

He even had a handsome voice, deep, rough, but warm and calm. She felt her stomach drop. It was a shame those had to be his first words to her, gripping her wrist as they stood half a pace behind the still oblivious merchant.

“Excuse me?” she repeated, with more determination, insulted, trying to tug herself free. His hand was locked like an iron manacle, inescapable, and the thrill of her hunt turned to the sour taste of real fear but she wouldn’t let that show either. She especially wouldn’t let that show. “How dare you!”

Her mark finally took notice of the strangers at his back and swept them both with an equally dismissive glare before hurrying off with the rest of his companions.

Obnoxious twats.

The usual noble sneer at her common as street trash self was a bitter gall in the back of her own throat and at least she knew she deserved it. She didn’t understand why the guard didn’t let her go and cheer her on, having pegged her occupation and target.

Perhaps, despite her best intentions, even she couldn’t hide all of that bitterness. Her captor chuckled softly and his grip loosened a fraction, though he still didn’t let her go.

Instead he tugged on her arm, almost playfully. “I’m serious, little bird, this sort of thing will get you locked up, if you’re _lucky_. Don’t let me catch you at it again.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Since she couldn’t escape him she went toe to toe, almost, but not quite, pressing against him. Something about the amusement in his Orsimer-red eyes put her off and she knew her look of wide-eyed innocence faltered. He wasn’t buying her bravado, any more than he was buying her denials.

And yet—

Standing right before her, inches separating them, his gaze visibly moved down from her face, tracing the lines of her tunic, from her admittedly unimpressive cleavage, which he’d be staring straight into from his significantly greater height, to, as far as she could tell, her toes.

She shouldn’t have, but she felt a little disappointed. Men were men, whether they really were men or mer or beastfolk. Base creatures all. But if it could get her out of a jam—she subtly arched her spine, offering him a better view.

He huffed, a soft sound that hinted at laughter, and reached for her with the hand that wasn’t still holding her wrist. They were on a public street. She had a good sense for people these days, honed in hard circumstances. She hadn’t taken him for the sort who’d molest her just because he could but—

His large hand, so warm it seemed to burn her skin through the heavy leather of her tunic, slid gently over her lower right side.

She tried to jerk away in a panic as she realized what he was really after, but she was captive and he was too quick for her, quick as a cutpurse himself. That deft slide, that near-caress at the curve of her waist, slipped two fingers into one of her hidden pockets, letting him snag the strings of the purse that was tucked away there and pull it out. He held her stolen prize up between the two of them.

The proof of her crime, the way he frowned at it, the way his warm, amused eyes cooled, made her feel strangely ashamed. And that made her mad.

She reached out with her free hand to try to snatch the stolen purse back but he easily raised it out of her reach.

“That’s mine!”

He looked at her and raised a brow, cocking his head in disbelief. “You carry a purse with the crest of the weavers’ guild?”

She wanted to curse. It wasn’t like she’d had time to examine the damned thing, it had gone from her previous mark’s pocket to hers with no time for examinations in between. “It was a gift from my lover, he’s in the guild and he wanted me to have it so I would think of him.”

The guard sighed and shook his head at her, holding the purse down for her to see.

“Then why did your ‘lover’ give you a purse with the crest of the fighters’ guild?

Damn her, when had the watch started hiring _intelligent_ guards? She obviously wasn’t fighters’ guild, she dismissed that excuse out of hand.

“—that was the guild I meant. You’re making me nervous. That was what you said the first time wasn’t it? Or was it? I don’t know! You have me all confused, just let me go!”

She tugged and twisted but she was surprised when he obliged, and she blinked at him as she backed away and he pocketed the stolen purse.

Her wrist tingled, warm where he’d held it. She ran her fingers through her short hair to distract herself. Once she’d been forced to keep it long because ‘short hair wasn’t lady-like;’ now it was a ragged bob, as nondescript a brown as her leathers, though it neared black when it had been so long since a good washing. She rubbed her hands on her thighs but she waited to see what he’d do next instead of scurrying off like she should.

His pocket wasn’t as secret as hers, she could maybe get it back if she cared to follow him for a bit. For pride’s sake.

“Thank you, citizen.” He’d pitched his gravelly voice a bit louder. “—for turning in this purse you found on the street. On behalf of the Empire, I applaud your civic mindedness and I assure you, I’ll see that it gets back to its proper owner.”

If it had been anyone else, she’d have known that for the lie it had to be. She’d stolen it, he’d stolen it from her, so it was his now. But somehow, she thought he meant what he’d said: he’d see the thing returned to its actual owner, coin probably included.

What sort of man was he?

He frowned, a ferocious expression on that craggy, tusked face, though she thought the actual intent behind it was probably rather milder. When she didn’t react he waved his fingers dismissively. “Well? Move along. And I mean it, find some honest work. Look to the temple if you’re in need. This sort of thing will get you maimed or killed. It’s not worth it.”

She nodded slowly. And for a moment, it made sense. No one would have said anything if he’d pinned her arm against the wall, used his imperial-issued blade to sever her hand at the wrist, and written up the report after. If she’d bled out, what would the Empire have cared? No one would have minded one less thief in the Imperial City.

She turned and scooted down a side alley, swearing she could still feel his eyes, long after she’d moved beyond his view.

* * *

Shiny Tom was a pretty bastard.

Tall for an Imperial, and slim for his broad shoulders. His curly, dark hair cut close, his eyes a deep brown that had deceived many a guileless newcomer to the Imperial City; he was charming and soulful in turns, with an easy smile and animate expression.

Tom was royalty on the streets, where the real nobility were wise enough not to push their luck, and he had a hand in everything, or he’d know why and someone would pay. No one wanted to be on his bad side; those that were had a tendency to disappear, gutter trash or citizen or guard.

A thief with ambitions would have tried to cozy up, but for her sins, Spar was an indifferent thief. She didn’t like stealing _per se_ , she just did it because it was easy work for someone as light on their toes as she was. Whatever the orc thought, pride wouldn’t fill her belly or buy her even a spot on the floor of any place with a roof and a fire. Not that her friend Idhasa asked much—or anything—in return for sharing her flat, but Idhasa had her own to feed and Spar wouldn’t have sponged.

It had happened one day that a friend of a friend caught Spar in her cups, whining about the scarce pickings when it came to purses, and he’d pointed her in her in the direction of one of Tom’s generals. Bored, drunk, and sulky, she’d made the mistake of meeting with him.

She’d always been good at sneaking around. There’d been plenty of need for a soft step in her early life, and it’d felt like old times in a not completely bad way. She tossed three houses for the fetcher before she’d cut and run, not knowing beforehand what she’d been getting into. The first two had been easy, and better for a night’s work than a week picking pockets, but the third house—

_He hadn’t warned her,_ was the thing.

She hadn’t been happy with the man who’d set her to it, and she’d been even less happy to find him breaking bread with Tom himself when she went to tell how it had gone.

On actual consideration, she didn’t want to impress Tom. She didn’t want to be on his mind at all, ever, or be the focus of that dark gaze. He’d smiled that charming smile, his lovely eyes gleaming—he’d kissed her damned hand, like she was highborn as her cousins—and he’d invited her to see him personally for more work. She had not.

Tom was the lord and the law of the streets and she knew she wouldn’t be able to avoid him forever, but she wasn’t going to volunteer herself until he was a good deal more insistent.

* * *

Avoiding Tom, maybe partly avoiding a certain orc guard too, Spar had been sticking more to the back alleys than usual.

Her prey was warier in these hunting grounds, but it wasn’t like the wealthy didn’t ever have reasons of their own to visit places like that.

It was a service to the skooma-heads, really, picking their pockets before they could buy their daily doses of poison. Of course, she didn’t doubt she was only delaying the inevitable. The marks she chose would have plenty more at home to try for another score.

But that particular day the fog was thick off the lake, heavy and damp, and the nobles seemed to be staying home. She wandered lonely streets with only the odd, shivering beggar for company, until she turned a corner and stumbled on a mass of street kids, mostly young ones.

The oldest, Kae, sat on a box, with the rest gathered around her feet, and Spar rolled her eyes when she heard what the girl was saying to keep her young conspirators so rapt.

“—and all the beggars was like his kids—”

“That’s ‘kits,’ Kae. A fox’ young are called kits,” Spar said, not sorry to interrupt the pointless fairytales.

The young thief, thirteen if she was that, just looked at her for a moment, before nodding. “Right. Kits, then. No beggar had nothing to fear when the Gray Fox was here, looking over them like his _kits_ , and running the Guild.”

“There’s no Guild,” Spar couldn’t help adding. Kae was too old to believe the stories and too smart to be spreading them to the younger ones.

The streets were dangerous, and there was no Thieves’ Guild and no kindly Gray Fox with his network of doyens, watching out for the honorless and the hungry; there was only Shiny Tom and his friends, and even the youngest of the little ones in front of her were old enough to know that. Their youth wouldn’t protect them from him.

“Not now, no, but when the Fox comes back—”

Gods, the worst part was that poor Kae sounded like she meant it. Spar could only shake her head, knowing she was in the right but not able to unsee the bitter anger that lit across the young thief’s face.

But then Kae’s chin went up, and a sudden cunning sparked in her eyes.

“Pity that. If we was Guild, maybe for _its_ sake I’d be obliged to tell you what I saw. As a favor, you know.”

Spar snorted. “Nice try.”

But there was the worry in the back of her mind that the girl wasn’t just poking at her—what if Shiny Tom was finally getting more insistent? What could the miscreant know?

The girl’s thin smile stretched her face. She looked older like that, withered, a young thing hardened and aged by a life lived rough.

“You’d want to know. You do want to know,” she taunted.

Spar waved and turned away, too smart to fall into that game. “If it matters to me I’ll find it out soon enough,” she said.

“How soon is soon enough? If it’s about that big orc guard you been mooning after, I mean.”

Fucking Oblivion, how did the little hell-child—

“—and Tom’s men.”

“What makes you think I care about a guard?” But she’d already given herself away, just in stopping, in turning around again, in facing the young street rat and her crew. Even the little ones smelled blood and whispered and nudged each other, giggling. Dibella’s tits.

Kae looked away, doing a poor job of hiding her triumph. “Good thing you don’t care.”

“What did you see, you little—”

Kae’s expression was suddenly angelic, as speaking as her outthrust palm.

Even though her heart was pounding—stupid, idiotic, what was _wrong_ with her—Spar couldn’t help smiling wryly as she dipped into her purse. She could have paid the girl less, and would have paid her more if she’d had it, but any way it went, she had to admire her. “What did you see, you scalawag?”

It chilled her how the girl’s expression changed, the playfulness gone, something like true regret taking its place. Kae wiggled a little on her perch. “Wasn’t really me—Húnn saw and told me.” She waved at one of the younger ones, a skinny little thing that couldn’t have been more than ten.

At the gesture the child—Spar couldn’t even tell under the dirt if it was a boy or a girl—stood and looked at her, shuffling. “He got into a fight with Iber.”

The chill became a lance of ice, spearing her belly. “Iber?”

Húnn nodded solemnly. “Drew his sword.”

By the Schemer Prince, the fool had drawn his blade on one of Tom’s generals? One of his top men, yet? “Did he—”

The child shrugged. “Didn’t see Iber cast nothing. But more of Tom’s boys came and they took the orc away.”

There were some downturned mouths among the other children, including Kae. Not that she’d been keeping an eye on him or anything, but Spar had seen him slipping coin and bread and apples to the street kids on more than one occasion. Better than the kick that most of the other guards gave them, even if he did keep pushing his line about straightening out their lives and going to the temple.

Innocent sod didn’t have a clue what went on there and it looked like even the kids couldn’t find it in their hearts to tell him.

“Fuck-ing hell,” Spar said, reeling.

Kae nodded. “He’s gone, then. It’s a shame.”

She could only nod.

“The Gray Fox could save him!” one of the children still sitting at her feet said.

The anger at that, the foolishness, the damned, straight-up stupidity, almost cleared her head for a second. “The Gray Fox isn’t real,” Spar said, more sharply than she would have otherwise.

Silence fell.

“Do you want some of your money back?” Kae offered after a moment, as much of an apology as anyone like them would ever give.

She shook her head. “Nah. Keep it, thanks,” she mumbled, walking briskly past them.

* * *

The orc was dead.

Tom didn’t waffle when it came to stuff like that; if the orc had pulled his weapon on one of Tom’s top generals he’d forfeit his life. What, by the Queen of Shadows, had the fool thought he was doing?

He was new to the Imperial City, Spar had figured that much out. Late of the Legion, stationed in Skyrim for a while, he’d taken a post in the city guard. He fed street kids, he gave coin to beggars, he was kind to harlots, even the rundown ones that weren’t so pretty anymore, skooma addicts, and worse. She’d seen the great galumphing fool stoop down to pet alley cats, for Kynareth’s sake. He was kind. He was… honorable.

And blast it all to Oblivion, he was _dead_.

It shouldn’t matter. He was nothing to her, a guard, an enemy, and now a dead man. As unlikely a creature as the Gray Fox. No man, let alone guard, was that… good.

* * *

She found Maccus standing on his usual corner, looking like he had nothing better to do than to prop up the street light. He was just keeping himself visible for his contacts, which she could only appreciate.

He didn’t notice her at first. It gave her too long of a moment for doubts, but she took a deep breath and then quietly coughed, trying to look casual even though her heart was pounding in her throat.

His gaze flicked over her and beyond but then shot back to her while he straightened from his lazy slouch.

“Spar, my old friend!” he said, showing too many teeth, all the way back to the rotten one on the upper right.

The slimy fetcher, like he hadn’t as cheerfully sent her off to what he’d fully thought would be her death.

“I want to talk to Tom,” she said.


	2. Chapter 2

No one could just talk to Tom. You didn’t walk up to him on the street like he was a normal person, not if you didn’t want one of his men taking your head off before you got a word out.

He had houses all over the city, in every district. The men Maccus summoned took her to the merchant quarter, to a jewelry shop so posh she wouldn’t have dared set foot in it on her own. Even with her obvious escort she still got the stink-eye from the girl behind the counter.

Tom was waiting for her upstairs, sprawled, insouciant, on a settee with a glass of something shimmering and golden. His gaze tracked her approach and he smiled while the pale, elegant fingers of one hand tapped idly on his knee, to the tune of the minstrel in the corner.

He was so damned pretty, it could have been all too tempting to forget what a dangerous snake he was. His smiled stretched wider as she came nearer, his eyes alight.

His black curls were angelic, his features sharp in his narrow face, his eyes like windows into blackness. He never looked quite sane to her, though it was an inviting sort of madness that peeked out behind those cheerfully dark eyes. He’d worn that same delighted expression when she’d stumbled on him personally shivving a beggar for not passing on enough of his meager take.

A man who liked to keep his own hand in it, was Tom.

“Well hello, poppet!” he purred, his voice like honeyed wine, sticky and sweet. He spoke posh, fine enough for the company in the white-gold tower, but her instincts didn’t buy it. She came from highborn stock herself, even if her family wouldn’t have spit on her now.

She only nodded.

Her reserve amused him, carving deep dimples around his well-formed mouth. He set his glass down and reached for her hands.

She didn’t know what else to do so she held them out and he took them, pressing them, and then bending to kiss the back of each.

“So glad you finally deigned to answer my invitation. Mmm—naughty girl.” He looked up at her, his teeth gleaming white.

“I’m here,” she said.

He didn’t release her and she didn’t try to pull away. His head cocked. “So you are,” he mused. “And we’re very glad. Aren’t we glad, boys?” he said, tugging her join him on the settee. She let him do that too, but she thought the handsome young minstrel didn’t look glad that Spar was there, being settled onto the couch beside Tom.

None of his men answered him.

“I was very pleased with your work for us,” he said, conversationally, finally releasing her so he could pour out another glass of that golden liquid from a sparkling, crystal decanter. He offered it to her and she took it, careful not to let their fingers touch again, nodding slightly in subdued thanks.

He winked and leaned back, stretching his arm behind her while he crossed one leg, caging her beside him on the settee. Imperials generally weren’t tall but Bretons were shorter, and she was short even for a Breton woman.

He took a sip of his drink and held his glass up to contemplate the light through it. “I was disappointed that you seemed less satisfied with the arrangement.”

“Some sort of warning would have been nice,” she couldn’t help muttering, before she tried to drown the words and the sting of annoyance with a sip of the mysterious liquor. The scent was strong enough to warn her off and she only took the smallest taste but still she felt it burn across her throat and tongue. It wasn’t skooma but she wouldn’t have been surprised to find out it came from a similar source and was likely just as addictive.

He laughed, as if she’d said something witty. “But a warning might have scared you off. And then none of us would have known what the little Breton mouse was capable of.” He eyed her, as though he still wondered.

She set her glass down, sitting as demurely as ever her family had taught her, knees together, arms close at her sides, making herself as small beside Tom as she could. “You have another job for me,” she said.

He broke out in that brilliant, manic smile. “Oh, indeed.”

“Then there’s something I want.”

He laughed. “Of course, there is, pet. I never doubted you’d come to me with a purpose.” He touched her cheek. She tried not to flinch.

* * *

It wasn’t what he expected and that only seemed to delight him more. She was doing a piss poor job of making herself uninteresting.

“The _orc?_ ”

He played scandalized but his surprise was genuine.

She had to force herself to ask the question she was most afraid to, but if she hadn’t then it would all have been a waste. “Is he alive?”

For a moment Tom didn’t answer, just watching with gleaming eyes as his lips slowly curled upwards, savoring the tension.

“Of course, he is, poppet. What sort of man do you take me for?”

“I want to see him.”

He took another sip, then set his glass down. “And you shall, my dear. Let us _all_ go see this fascinating guard, hmm?” 

* * *

The cellar of the jewelry shop was well lit, a tidy storage space for an upscale store. Even with her fingers twitching with curiosity in the presences of all those sealed boxes and crates, she focused on the shadowy corners of the room, searching for any sign of the orc.

A poor thief she would have been if she couldn’t quickly distinguish an empty room from an occupied one though, and she knew there wasn’t anyone else in that basement.

Tom only laughed at her humorless stare, holding his arms wide as he descended the steps behind her. “You trust me so little, poppet? It wounds me, truly it does.”

“Where is he?”

Or had he lied when he’d told her the orc still lived?

“You have to look harder than that. If I wasn’t already so convinced of your skill this might just give me doubts, pet.” Toothy in his pleasure, he nodded his head towards a corner packed full of boxes.

Peering through the stacked shapes and shadows, she could see now that it was deceiving: the boxes weren’t quite pushed against the walls and they cast their shadows on a door there. She quickly tried the knob but it didn’t budge.

“I can have someone fetch the key but I didn’t think—ah, there you go,” he said, as she slipped a pick out of one cuff and into the keyhole, ignoring him. It was a good lock, a very good lock, but she was no slouch with her picks and in a moment the lock clicked and the knob turned under her hand.

She was cautious opening the door, but when nothing erupted out of the darkness on the other side she risked a peek. It was too dark to make out much detail, but there was a hunched form sitting down against the wall. She couldn’t tell what state he was in, until Tom joined her, cradling a ball of mage-light in his hand.

The orc looked up then, blinking, teeth and tusks bared, alive, not even as bruised as she’d have expected if they’d had him for most of the day. They must have had other things going on, so they’d shoved him aside like live prey in a predator’s larder.

He was unbroken enough to sweep them with a proud glare. She didn’t think he recognized her, the way his grim gaze encompassed them all together. He couldn’t tell her from one of Tom’s people.

“What do you want?” he demanded, gruff—but _alive_ —staying where he was though she could see from the way the muscles bunched across his shoulders and bare arms, he was readying himself to react if someone made a move on him. They’d taken his armor, left him stripped down to his underpants, but he only looked more dangerous. More… orcish. A mountain of muscle, tense under dark gray skin.

It might have been insulting that he didn’t recognize her, but she was just relieved to see him alive and whole. She turned to Tom. “I’ll do it.”

He frowned. “That’s it?”

“That’s—what?” She could feel the untrusting weight of the orcs’s gaze.

Tom twisted his head to look between her and his prisoner. “That’s all this precious reunion is worth to you? Just an ‘I’ll do it?’ No tears? No leaping into each other’s arms, clinging to every dear moment together?”

She blinked, glad that despite her city pallor she wasn’t one for blushing. “I don’t think this is what you think it is.”

He turned a blankly curious look on the orc, who watched them from the cell with just as suspicious an expression.

She wasn’t particularly interested in explaining herself to either of them.

* * *

Tom didn’t care what interested her.

“So, now that’s it’s just us—do tell me, pet: why would you take a job you obviously don’t want for the sake of an orc guard who doesn’t even seem to know who you are?”

They’d returned to the upstairs parlor, the orc shut away safely in the basement with all the jewelry shop’s other treasures. Alive. At least for now.

Spar shrugged. “Does it matter? Don’t you want me to try for these boots you want so bad?”

His gaze was cold, dissecting her, but not satisfied with what he imagined he was seeing. He sulked. “No, poppet, I don’t want you to _try_ for anything. I want you to succeed. I was already making inquiries, you know. I’d heard there’s a lovely family of Khajiit who could have struck up introductions between us if you’d continued to avoid me.”

_Molag Bal’s left nut._

“I will succeed,” she boasted, panic underpinning her false confidence.

A coven of vampires, in the Imperial City. Even if she’d dared turn the job down, she wasn’t sure she’d ever feel safe walking the streets by night again.

_Vampires_.

It was what she got for unknowingly knocking over a necromancer’s house and living to tell about it.

* * *

She didn’t waste time making for the place, a mansion falling to ruin in Titus Square, alone and seeming unoccupied. It was hours since sunset but she didn’t think there was a good time of day to sneak into a den of vampires so it may as well be now, while adrenaline and terror were strong enough to overcome her sense of self-preservation.

A torch would have been suicide, whether the house’s inhabitants were vampires or daedra or entirely mortal, but she was a thief who believed in being prepared. Her prized possession, the only heirloom she had from the family estate back in High Rock—stolen, her cousins wouldn’t ever have let the poor relation have such a valuable trinket—was her Ring of Nighteye.

In a place with any ambient light at all it would leave her blind, but in the near pitch darkness of the midnight city, away from the nicer parts of town where people cared enough to keep the streetlights lit, it was perfect, revealing a shadowless world in silvery-blue.

Just outside the house she slipped it on and gently shook her head, giving herself a moment to adjust, but she had practice and it didn’t take long. And now, the front door easing open, she could see the obstacles before her: the broken chair, the fallen timber from the floor above, the torn-up rugs and broken flagstone. There were no monsters looming to the sides of her as she let herself in with the key Tom had given her, just the old wooden bones of the house poking through its own daubed skin. Just old furniture left from the last time someone had tried to make it livable.

She wondered if the vampires had already been there even then.

Down was the direction she needed to be heading, but she didn’t like to be too single-minded and not just for curiosity’s sake. Focus was good, but being too focused could easily get you killed if it made you miss the enemy at your back or the escape route from the enemy at your front.

She looked for the stairs that led up, first.

She’d only been in one of the houses in Titus Square before, and it had already been divided up into the tenement that most of the other once-mansions had become when this part of the city had lost its glamor. Creeping through the empty Imbel house gave her a sense of how grand the quarter really must have been back in the day. It was bigger than her family’s house in Daggerfall.

Though clearly no one had been there in a good while, there were still signs that others had passed through. On the second floor there was a crude fire pit set up next to a ruined fireplace. It was long cold but full of ashes and a few small bones lay scattered by a dusty, crumpled bedroll. There wasn’t a pack or anything like one though, and it had clearly all been tossed long ago, probably multiple times; all the containers she came across, the rusted barrels and broken crates and odd, shattered pottery urns, were empty.

There was a grand dining room with a nearly intact dining table overturned but too heavy to be taken, and several rooms that were smaller only in comparison, leaving her to guess they’d once been bedrooms.

 A decaying wooden staircase led up from the dining room into a darkened, doorless… attic? She had to look away as she neared the top of the creaking stairs; the moonlight filtering down through the open spaces in the roof was too much for her eyes while she was wearing the ring. But the attic room was empty too, full only of the dust of its decaying walls.

For some reason she felt a chill—a breeze from the cool night, coiling into the empty house through the cracks, or perhaps the knowledge that now that she’d checked the house there was nowhere left to go but down.

There’d been a stairway on either side of the second floor, one from the hall with the bedrooms and one from the dining room, but the one from the dining room had fallen, the wood and stone collapsed into a great hole halfway down, likely falling through to the cellar. She looked down into that darkness for a moment but even with her ring there was nothing to see from this side but the splintered beams and crumbled masonry. If something was waiting below it—something was, she wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t—then she couldn’t hear or see it from up here. But more to the point, could it hear or see her?

She backtracked, just as carefully, always mindful that even in a space that seemed clear, she couldn’t ever be sure she was the only thing doing its best not to be noticed. This wasn’t a normal break-in.

The first floor was all open, even the walls that had once divided it long having crumbled, leaving only the bare pillars that kept the whole second floor from caving in. It was really just a matter of time unless someone stepped in soon to reinforce it.

Underneath where the stairs went up, were the two doors she’d been avoiding, twinned, like the stairs to the upper floor. No way of knowing if they both led to the same place or if one was just a room or a dead end.

No way but to stop delaying and make herself go. 

She took the door under the stairs that weren’t caved in. There was no lock on this door and beyond it, only a darkness so deep that even with her ring it took her a moment to adjust to the dim, silvery world.

It was just a stairwell. Just a corner, where the stairs cut away to her right. Others who had gone this way had not come back but there was no sign of them here. That was good.

She was just a thief. Really just a girl who was good at moving unnoticed and getting into places she shouldn’t. She didn’t want to see the signs of the people Shiny Tom had sent here before her, but that didn’t stop her from looking as she crept carefully down the stairs, hugging the wall.

Was that a blood stain?

That fallen stone, was that really just a rock?

It was a danger of the ring, that she could see but everything was colorless. She could still be sneaked up on, it was easier to hide when all she had to go on was texture, and the old, crumbling walls of the basement provided plenty of that.

The valleys and canyons of the brick easily took on the facsimile of faces. Natural grooves in the wall made daunting silhouettes. She couldn’t ignore any of it, the chance of one of those phantom forms being the real thing was too genuine of a threat.

There were ancient casks down in what might have been the wine cellar, but most had been broken open if not completely bashed apart. She kept to the walls, picking her way carefully through the mess, watching for loose metal, wood, and stone that could scrape under her feet or break, or skip away, announcing her trespass.

She breathed as shallowly as she could. The stiffness of her leather jerkin would hide the movement if she needed to be still, but she had to breathe and there were things it could warn her of too—like the smell.

Old as the corpse was, she was almost on it before she caught the first whiff, which was just as well. She did manage to see it before she stepped on it. It had desiccated down in the dry basement, away from the sun and the things that might have fed on it. There really wasn’t much smell left to it at all, which was why it had taken her hovering over it before she noticed.

She embraced the flare of panic, her heart stuttering in horror, but she kept still, she kept quiet; she froze rather than breaking for the door in a rush, like a foolish part of her wanted to. The body was thrown across the jam of another doorway. Beyond it, a narrow hall led to another room, lined with shelves, but empty of the broken wine casks. A storage room. Perhaps a pantry.

She tried not to focus on the dead man’s wizened face. She’d broken into a necromancer’s house only a month or so before, that was how she recognized that musty smell of old flesh, and how she knew that the thing at her feet might be more of a threat than it looked. She stepped over it carefully, watching where her foot would land on the other side, unable to get the visions out of her head—the eyes opening, emaciated claw-hands reaching, the death scream closing on a sudden, hungry gnashing of bone pale teeth—she had to look though. Just because it seemed ridiculous, a child’s terror, didn’t mean it couldn’t also be real.

Either it was truly dead or she’d succeeded in not waking it. She didn’t let herself sigh. Beyond the corpse she stood in the small hallway, lined with broken furniture and connecting the two larger storage rooms. It was the only thing like a hallway she’d found since coming down the stairs from the first floor and that was what Tom had said she was to look for: the hallway in the basement. There should be another door—

Keeping an eye on the recumbent corpse and cautious not to give herself away, she tried to get a look around the heavy wooden table with two broken legs that had been propped, door-like, against the wall. It seemed the likeliest hiding spot. She pressed against the old wood but it didn’t budge, even as she increased the force she was using until she was leaning in with all her strength. Maybe it wasn’t anything to a vampire to move that great slab of a table but there was no chance _she_ could manage it alone.

Annoyed, she looked around. There were broken chairs too, heavy, probably not much easier for her push them around and impossible for her to do it silently even if she could have used them to lever the table out of its place.

She checked the corpse again, it still hadn’t moved, and she glanced along the hallway floor. In bracing herself to nudge at the table she’d upset the dust, and now she could see there was a particularly ordered line of similar sized and shaped rock in one patch of floor along the wall opposite the table. They were cut differently than the rocks that formed the floor around them, as though perhaps they’d been cut out and replaced.

She slid under a lopsided candelabra with its candle-less arms outstretched as though for an embrace and started checking that wall. Even with her ring the silvery grain of the wood hid any seams, if they were there, but when she felt along the surface she could just catch an irregular depression with her nails. Running her fingertips patiently along that trail she decided it could _perhaps_ mark a short, well-hidden door.

With another glance at the corpse she dropped from her crouch, going completely to her knees. If there wasn’t a pull there might still be a keyhole…

There!

With her ring she could see it, and once she’d verified the little dimple in the wood with her fingertip she had her picks back out before she could think better of it.

She needed to get what she’d come for and get out, but nerves were a killer—snapping her picks in what was turning out to be a particularly challenging lock. She caught the broken end of the second pick; again, before it could ring out her presence on the stone floor.

A curse died unspoken on her lips. Quiet patience was the virtue that had seen her through the hell her family home in Daggerfall had been, to the streets of Cyrodiil’s capitol. It wasn’t much of an improvement, but at least she was her own woman here.

Steadying herself, pride beating back fear, she tried again.

The next pick slid into the keyhole and swiveled, and she could feel the difference as she did in those rare, breathless moments of perfect luck, as though her hand were guided to the pattern, instinct finding just the right pressure points to trick those hidden tumblers into proper alignment. As she’d hoped and feared, the wall swung gently open.

There was light on the other side.


	3. Chapter 3

She slipped the ring from her finger and into its pocket and slid around the door, only opening it as far as she had to. The basement had been expanded into a cave system, though whether it had been cut into the bedrock of the city or had existed first and simply been connected to the house above, she couldn’t tell.

Someone had set up torches along the walls, in sturdy iron sconces, and the torches were lit. It could have been magic, she supposed, but it didn’t look it, and mundane torches would need to be tended, fueled, lit, and replaced.

The first small chamber was thankfully empty, but three halls broke away from it in each of three directions, left, right, and center. She paused to listen, but there was nothing but the crackle of the torches and soft murmur of what could have been a breeze through the rock caves or her own blood through her veins.

She hoped the vampires couldn’t hear it if it was the latter.

The right passage, her first attempt, led steeply downward, featureless except for the mounted torches, narrow, cold, until it opened into another small chamber with another, fresher corpse. She’d been looking for it from the hall, not willing to venture in until she was sure it was clear.

When she saw it wasn’t, she held well back. The room was better lit than the hallway with the first corpse and if it could ‘see’ her, it certainly would if she took another step or two into that small room.

There was a chest beside the dead man, torchlit, like a beacon. Tom had made it clear that his intel had it his prize had been _interred_ , buried, inside a coffin or some sort of reliquary, and she didn’t think that alluring, closed chest was likely to be it.

She’d have gone to investigate anyway, if it wasn’t for that body, one arm draped over top of the chest as if it was waiting for someone to come. It was too obvious of a trap.

She forced her curiosity down and turned back.

The center passage led around a corner into an even larger room, and this one, finally, was occupied by what were clearly more than corpses.

The three forms were too far away, thankfully, for her to know whether they were vampires, but she trusted Tom’s word on it in this case. She backtracked instantly, not willing to go such a dangerous route until she  knew the layout of at least everything behind her, in case she had to run.

 There was a torch at the entrance of the last chamber, and it was larger than the first two rooms she’d found but seemed smaller than the second. It bent left though, and she couldn’t see from where she’d stopped, well back in the shadows of the hall, whether it dead ended or continued.

She might have returned to press her way forward through the center chamber, except that there were coffins in this one, inset into the walls on either side and along that other branch that disappeared out of her view. Tom had said this was what she was looking for, but there weren’t supposed to be burial chambers in the city, except in the great cemetery on the Green Way. They could have just been beds for the vampires, she supposed, but they didn’t seem convenient, tucked so tightly into the walls as the coffin niches were.

This room also held a vampire, close enough for her to see by its features that it wasn’t normal or mortal. Her heart leapt but she steadied her breath.

He was, or had been, a Nord. A typical Nord, with his blond hair in plaits. Whether his eyes had been blue she couldn’t have said, they were red now and reflected light oddly while he flipped impatiently through a book that clearly wasn’t holding his attention. He faced the hall where she was, and he was surrounded by coffins, any of which could have held the prize she’d been sent for.

Better one than three?

Every hair prickling, she crept out into the room, resisting the urge to stare at its other occupant and let the weight of her gaze reveal her. She sneaked glances at him, she’d have been mad not to, but she couldn’t forget to watch where she was going either. The direction she’d chosen would keep her in shadow until she was beside him, then she’d just need to him not to turn around. She’d have to come back the same way though, the lantern he was reading by cast the other wall in light from his table almost to the hallway entrance.

But even if he didn’t look up, could her heartbeat betray her? Could her scent? She hadn’t been naïve enough to think that vampires didn’t exist, but she didn’t know much about them.

He didn’t move, other than flipping through his book, but she wasn’t completely sure he was unaware and she was braced to run if she had to, for however far she could. Stiff, she made it past him, into the darkness and also the light behind his back. It would only take him turning around—

The first coffins she reached were, like so many other things in the house above, broken, and she could see without touching them that there wasn’t anything inside but old bones. The third was empty entirely, the lid askew and one side missing.

The part of the room she hadn’t been able to see around its bend turned out to be a dead end, showcasing a macabre altar of sorts, decorated with carefully arranged bones. If she hadn’t been so aware of the vampire still casually perusing his book behind her she might have broken at the sight of the corpse that had been hung from the ceiling, her throat cut to bleed out into a stone basin below.

Spar wished she’d still been wearing the ring so she wouldn’t have to remember the color of that blood, no longer quite fresh but still bright. She’d looked away as soon as she’d made sense of what she was seeing, but she couldn’t forget the dead woman’s face. She couldn’t keep herself from wondering if she’d ever seen the woman around the city, perhaps even exchanged glances or a few words with her. What ill luck had brought the poor fool down here… to the same place Spar herself was standing now?

Whatever had done it, the terrible flash of that purpled face was going to haunt her nightmares, if she lived long enough to have any more.

Beside the altar—and the corpse—two more coffins rested on their rock shelves and the bottom one looked whole. She glanced at the vampire again, and determinedly away from the corpse, and reached for the last coffin.

The fact that the lid gave no resistance when she pushed at it warned her before she had it open, either it was a trap or it was empty. She opened it anyway. As if there was much she could do that would be more mad that what she’d already done to get where she already was. Still, she was glad to find only an old skeleton and a tarnished silver necklace lying among the disarticulated bones of its neck.

She closed the coffin, leaving the bones and the necklace undisturbed.

Only when she’d successfully crept back past the guardian and horrors of that room and stood in the empty first chamber with the three branching passageways, did she allow herself the softest, most heartfelt of sighs. She sank from her stealthy crouch to rest on her haunches, leaning back against the cool stone wall.

She gave in, and let herself tremble for a moment, as certain as she could be that she was alone. For now. Until one of the vampires came this way, making rounds, or moving between passages, or just taking a walk in their own space where she most definitely did not belong.

She straightened, forcing her legs to hold her, forcing them not to shake. This wasn’t just for the orc. Tom knew about Idhasa and her little ones, too. Obviously he would, but he’d _mentioned_ them, a pointed threat from a man who’s very name was threat enough for most people.

There was nowhere left to check then, but that central passage and its room with the three waiting vampires. That was three sets of eyes she’d have to avoid, three sets of ears she couldn’t alert.

But there was also the prickling whisper of her pride, that electric shiver down her spine that wasn’t entirely fear. She’d already sneaked past one vampire. Twice. Couldn’t she handle three?

They were as she’d left them: two sitting together at a table, engrossed in a card game. The third seated against the far wall, toying idly with a lute on his lap. There was a bloody skull and a pewter goblet on the crate beside him.

“Arkay’s sake, are you ever going to learn a new tune?” the female vampire suddenly snarled. Spar used the sudden breaking of the silence to flit the few steps into the room, keeping low. The one with the lute was the only one positioned to see her as she came in and fortunately, he didn’t look up.

The male beside the one who’d spoken snickered and the lutist just scoffed.

“Playing that bad already, are you?” he asked.

“Maybe if you weren’t always plunking out the same damned songs, I could concentrate!”

Their distraction was only the better for her.

She could see the annoyance in the way the female card player held herself even though she couldn’t see her face. What startled her, briefly, in a distracted sort of way, was how normal they seemed. She’d expected vampires to be different somehow, animalistic or sophisticated like in the tales. Ravenous beasts, snarling and prowling the chambers below the old house, blood dripping from their fangs and claws—or mincing fops, chortling as they recited poetry and sipped blood from sparkling goblets.

These three mostly seemed bored. Annoyed yet comfortable with each other, in the way of long-time companions. If she’d met the three of them in a tavern she wouldn’t have thought anything about them.

That was a chilling thought.

But not one to ponder over now. Either way, the lutist was distracted by his own playing, the couple by their cards, and Spar saw no reason to interfere with in the ease of their company and wasted no time skirting the room towards the back, where a small alcove that wasn’t lit by the torches looked like it might hide yet another passage.

There were fewer torches in this larger room, the better for her, and the ones there were seemed mostly centered around that large, round table.

Like a dining table, with room for easily eight or ten more than just the card playing pair that currently occupied it, and room for an impressive spread on it, if they’d used it that way. An adult Breton, for example, would have fit tidily sprawled across it, with room to spare.

She kept them in her sights, and the lutist, wanting to be sure she was ready to react if any of the three suddenly decided to stand or move around. It was much more dangerous than the single vampire in the other chamber.

Looking purely at numbers though, three wasn’t as dangerous as four. Especially when the fourth was leaning against the wall in the same dark corner she’d been working towards, idly scraping under his claw-like nails with an iron dagger.

At the same moment she saw him, he also seemed to notice he might not be alone, looking up and sniffing the air like a dog.

She’d already ducked into the passage, a breath before he could see her, she hoped, but already too late to avoid detection. She kept going.

“Is someone there?” he demanded, his voice rough, rusty. Hungry?

The lutist stopped playing. The sound of chairs shoving across dirt and rock followed her dash down the dark passage and around a corner. There were no torches here and without stopping she stuck her hand in her pocket, slipping the ring onto her finger.

A glance over her shoulder revealed an alcove stacked with barrels, ahead there was another room, and she could hear the echoing sounds of the vampires checking the one she’d just left. She’d expected to run into more torches but this last room had been left in darkness.

It was also full of coffins. Unlike the ones in the chamber with the altar and the vampire who’d been reading, these coffins all looked whole. And dusty.

The chase hadn’t ended but the vampire she’d nearly stumbled into must not have been _sure_ she’d been there or their hunt would have been more aggressive, and probably already over.

Not giving herself time to think she ducked around a stack of coffins and crawled between an open one and the wall, adjusting its lid over herself at an angle as close to its original position as she was able to get it.

It did occur to her that if this had all been a tale, she would have hidden inside one of the coffins and that one would definitely have turned out to the be the one that held Tom’s precious boots, but real life was so rarely that accommodating.  

With her ring the darkness under the coffin lid was as bright as noon, if far more monochrome, but an instant later the light of a torch turned the room outside of her little hideaway into a blaze of white.

One of the vampires sniffed loudly as at least two of them noisily prowled the room, pacing the walls and, yes, opening coffins.

“Will you stop doing that!” A male voice finally snapped. “You’re not a damned dog.”

“I tell you, I can smell him. Someone broke in. He walked right by me,” another male voice answered, the sniffer, from across the chamber. Likely the one she’d almost accidentally introduced herself to.

“And I tell you, you’re nuts. That or it was a ghost. No one got in here, let alone close enough to ‘walk by you’ without the rest of us noticing.” He was still moving around though, and much closer to her than his friend was. Just on the other side of that stack of coffins, it sounded like.

And then came the blaze of blinding light as he held the torch up behind them, over the empty coffin she’d hid beside.

She did hold her breath then, and squeezed her eyes tight, but she could still see the light burning behind her eyelids, red through that thin skin, even though it would all be silver and white if she’d opened them.

She didn’t trust the comfortable darkness when it settled over her again, the vampire moving back away from her hiding spot, his torchlight diffused around the other coffins again.

“I smelled something!”

A crash sounded. She didn’t make a whimper, but the need to was a physical thing, lodged her throat. One of the stacks of coffins in the room had just been knocked over, spilling noisily into the wall and other coffins. She could hope one of them had held what she was looking for and it had broken open when they’d fallen. She could also hope they weren’t going to knock them all over until they found or crushed her.

“You’re an idiot. I think you smelled your own stinking ass. There’s _nothing_ here but us.”

“Fuck you!”

“Fuck you—I’m going back to the others.”

She could hear the one that had been nearer stalk away, mumbling.

The one that stayed either didn’t move or moved in such a perfect silence that it would’ve made her jealous, except the light of the torch didn’t change, and it was more likely he was simply standing, still trying to see or hear or even smell her. Waiting her out.

She let herself breathe again, shallow and open-mouthed, but she kept still enough for someone to have mistaken her for something that belonged in one of those coffins.

He stood there an eternity, far enough away that his torch light didn’t blind her, but there was nothing to see in the slim crack where the coffin lid touched the coffin, obscuring her as well as her view.

Even when the light dimmed and she heard the sound of his footsteps trudging away as he muttered grimly under his breath she stayed where she was, in the darkness, in the silence, surrounded by coffins.

The silence rang so loudly when she finally crawled out from her hiding place that she wasn’t entirely sure she’d have heard one of the vampires there if they had been. As quietly as she could, she checked around the wall of coffins that had hidden hers. Across the way, one of the stacks was now more of a pile, a row really, knocked over but vaguely in a line, side by side.

When nothing stirred, she carefully moved out into the room to more thoroughly survey her options. There were dozens of coffins and none seemed to have any obvious label that said _Here Lie_ _Tom’s Stupid Boots,_ but she didn’t have any practical ideas for how to check them all.

Rather than all crumbling wood, many of the coffins here were stone, and they were piled nearly to the low ceiling, well above her head. She doubted she could even unstack them, let alone open them, and that with no consideration of the noise. Maybe she would have been better off if the vampires had flailed around a bit more and tossed a few more stacks for her.

She did check the ones that had fallen. One, another of the wooden ones, had shattered. Yet another of wood and another of stone, though they’d both ended up on their sides, opened easily enough but neither held Tom’s boots. The next stone coffin took some effort and she was disappointed but not surprised to find nothing inside but moldering bones. The last stone one from the fallen stack didn’t open at all, no matter what she did, and she didn’t know if it had been sealed shut somehow or if it was just too old and the two halves had corroded together. It may as well have been a solid mass of rock for all her luck at opening it.

She drummed absently at the lid of the sealed coffin, the soft pads of her fingers only, so her agitation made no noise.

There had to be another way to do this. If it came down to opening all of the coffins in the room, she was out of luck, it was beyond her. But Tom wasn’t likely to accept even that as an excuse and she’d already come so far. She glanced at the empty corridor that led back to the vampires.

He hadn’t told her much about these boots he wanted badly enough to keep tossing his men at them when they’d kept not coming back, but they had to be magical, didn’t they? Why else would he have such a hard-on for them?

She took another nervous glance at the corridor and slipped her ring off, tucking it away, leaving herself in perfect, velvety darkness. But maybe without the ring’s magic she’d be able to sense the magic in the boots and it might narrow down her search.

She started making her way by feel around the room. She could have closed her eyes as she felt her way along stone walls and ancient coffins, but dumb animal instinct wouldn’t let her, even though it left her no less blind and if anything, prey to the phantoms of her mind’s creation. Darkness had patterns in it that looked like faces, like monsters. It was worse than when she wore the ring; in this case it really was just her eyes wanting to see something, her head needing to make sense of it—though why they insisted on seeing _those_ things, was a question she couldn’t have answered.

Nothing felt like anything to her, but darkness and stone and old wood, and the terror of walking blindly in the home of something terrible and hungry.

If there was anything magical in the room with her it was too well hidden, or, more likely, she just wasn’t good enough with magic to feel it.

…But the blue glow that she’d thought was just a trick of her eyes didn’t change, and when she realized that she could see the outline of one of the coffins in front of it she paused.

Akatosh’ spines, had it worked?

She kept her ring off until she reached it, walking blind across the room, feeling her way, guided by that faint glow. Nearly tucked behind another of the walls of stacked coffins, on the ground, set into the stone of the tunnel itself, there was a small metal plaque, and something behind it was glowing. Blue and dim, but just bright enough to be seen when there was no other light.

She put the ring back on and brushed decades of dirt away from the plaque, maybe centuries.

_Jackben. Earl of Imbell._

_For friendships undying._

_G.F._

 

It only took her a second and she rolled her eyes when she got it, though she wasn’t sure what it was supposed to mean. Didn’t matter, if there was something magical enough to cast its glow through the room hidden behind it. She couldn’t see the light with her ring on, too dim, too blue, but she knew something was there.

She pulled out one of her daggers, the smallest, and started scraping at the crust over the screws that held the metal plate in its place. It was delicate work, finicky as picking a lock, but she was patient, especially with her hope kindled again.

And her curiosity.

Was it the boots that glowed so alluringly? What did the vampires have hidden here, in such an inconsequential little hidey-hole? Or did _they_ not even know?

The third screw fell, and slipped off her hand before she could catch it, tinkling on the stony ground. She froze.

She was alone, but how good was the vampires’ hearing? How far had the suspicious one really gone?

Nothing answered her unvoiced questions and after a long, anticipatory silence, she snatched the screw back up and went to work on the last.

Careful as though she were breaking a safe, because that’s what it felt like, her skin electrified, her breath fast, she pulled the plaque away from the wall and set it aside, peering into the hole she’d revealed. There were boots tucked back into the little alcove, like something out of a posh old painting, tall and cuffed, lacy, heeled, and foolish.

She couldn’t tell with her ring on, but she didn’t think the glow was coming from them, but from the strange thing that had been laid in front of them.

Cloth, or fine leather, it was dark, even with her ring. Lines of runes had been stitched and carved and maybe burned into it, and it made her uncomfortable just to look at them. She watched it for a moment, like she might have watched a poisonous animal, waiting to see if it would strike or flee. She couldn’t shake the feeling that it was somehow watching her back.

That made more sense when she finally did reach for it and hold it up and realized that it was some sort of mask or hood, the empty eye sockets staring at her from among the runes. They were so dark—but that was just the material on the inside of the hood, she was just looking into the back of it was all.

Part of her wanted to leave it there. Tom had only sent her for the boots after all and whatever magic was on the mask was stranger than anything she’d ever seen back in High Rock. But… that meant it could also be extremely valuable if she found the right buyer. Regardless of Tom’s plan for her after she gave him the boots, hers was definitely to cut her losses and run as far as she could at the first opportunity; it was possible the creepy mask might pay her way.

Before she could talk herself out of it, she folded it up and slipped it into one of her hidden pockets, only surprised that it folded up so flat for something that seemed to have such a weight to it.

Then she pulled out the boots. Magical too, or leather that old should have been crumbling at her touch, but she was less interested in them. They were spoken for, and even if he hadn’t had the orc, and hadn’t mentioned Idhasa and her family, Spar wouldn’t have double-crossed Shiny Tom.

She held them up so she could look them over though. Dibella’s sacred flower, they were ugly.

—stone scraped loudly against stone, somewhere behind her.

She pressed the boots to her chest and ducked back against the wall of coffins, reasoning that whatever was in the room with her must still be on the other side.

As if she didn’t have a good idea what the sound was—and what was in the room.


	4. Chapter 4

It wasn’t trying to be quiet, unlike her. The scraping-stone sound continued until the coffin lid overbalanced and crashed to the ground, making such a thud she’d swear she could feel it echoing in her teeth.

Her mouth fell open, so she could breath deeply, but quietly. For a moment she shut her eyes, wishing she was on good enough terms with the gods to offer up a prayer. Wishing she believed in them enough to think one of them might save her.

Clothing rustled, armor clanged. Joints creaked and popped and someone yawned noisily. She pressed closer to the coffins that separated her from the vampire and searched between them for some crack that might let her see what she was facing now.

An orc. Tall, broad, with braids nearly to his waist, and in full orcish armor with a greatsword strapped to his back.

Well. It wasn’t that big of a problem. She’d just wait for him to go and rejoin the rest of his friends and she’d slip out past all of them.

“I know you’re there—” he sniffed, deep, like the other one had earlier. “—Breton, is it?”

Malacath’s black eye.

He inhaled deeply again, and slowly turned until she could see him facing her through a crack in the stack of coffins, smiling. Knowing exactly where she was.

—For a moment she wondered why an Orsimer vampire even needed fangs, when they already had the tusks. It just seemed like they would interfere with each other—

He was coming towards her, casually, slowly, drawing out the game.

Damn his smug eyes, but he hadn’t called for his friends yet, it was still just him and her.

She waited, heart pounding.

Two steps had him too close for her to see his face through the crack anymore but she could hear the amusement in his voice. “Come out, come out, little girl,” he crooned, putting her in mind of a wolf from a fairy tale.

She waited a moment longer, for him to get closer at the pace he was taking, just on the other side of the coffins. A breath, to steady herself, to give him one step more—

She shoved against the coffins that separated them with a shout, kicking out to get her feet against the tunnel wall and put that force and push behind her too. She’d been afraid she wouldn’t be fast enough, or strong enough, but the rotting wooden boxes that had been unwisely set near the bottom of the stack crumbled, leaving the rest to overbalance and fall. He went down under the rain of stone and splintering wood, quickly pinned.

Too bad for her that none of the wood splinters had managed to catch him. How much difference between a heavy, sharpened splinter from one of the coffins and a wooden stake, after all? She could have tried to finish him off that way, but he was snarling and clawing at his heavy snare and she needed to be gone before his friends joined them and anyway she was already halfway down the corridor to the main room before she’d even fully grasped the thought.

Like a hunted hare, her heart beat out the rhythm of the chase. You didn’t stop, you didn’t look back, when you were being pursued you fucking ran and her body knew it better than her head did.

She didn’t have to make it all the way out, she only had to make it to the bend in the tunnel where the barrels were, so she could hide and let the other vampires pass her by.

The light of their torches illuminated the turn in front of her, painting the barrels faintly gold. She dashed behind them and snatched a rock from the ground, skipping it down the hall, back the way she’d come.

The vampires snarled like a pack of wolves and raced past her, chasing the rock and the sound of their comrade’s angry shouts.

“Mortal! You idiots, there’s a mortal!” the orc vampire howled, but she was already gone, down the corridor, back to the card room, his voice chasing her where he couldn’t, but to much less effect.

She’d counted though.

She was still, unmoving in the first room, with its three, branching halls, when the first vampire she’d seen, the blond Nord, came strolling out to check on the ruckus. His movements were stiff, aggrieved, and he was clearly in no hurry to answer the words that she at least could no longer make out, the way they echoed and twisted through the underground tunnels.

It felt like an eternity, letting him pass, and she moved quicker than she normally would have, taking the chance that he was distracted enough that he wouldn’t notice her slipping away behind him. Again.

They’d be on her in a moment, she was sure. The orc would already have sent them back on the hunt; it would take them no time to run into the Nord and catch him up as well. She had to get out of the house.

She panted as she scampered from the tunnel, ducking under the old candelabra to break back out into the basement.

In ghastly realization of her earlier fears, the corpse at the door jam _woke up_ when she vaulted over it, reaching out, scrabbling at her boots, but it was a poor guard dog, too late to rouse its masters’ attention now. Gamely, it tried though, snarling and scraping its exposed, boney fingertips across the floor with a chorus of shrieks that made her shudder.

Dead things of that sort were slow, she’d learned in the necromancer’s house, and she was back up to the first floor long before it could claw its way up to what was left of its feet.

She imagined it being trampled as the vampires poured from the tunnel, too slow to get out of their way.

Nothing blocked her from the door though, or the street, as she flung herself out onto it, leaving the old front door swinging loosely on its creaking hinges.

A coven of vampires that size could have taken a good number of humans, especially humans who were unaware, but the closest place she could think of to hole up—at night, when the streets would still be open to _them_ —was the tavern across the way.

It was an unsavory place, a perfect fit for its part of town. The ale she bought to pay for the seat she took, by the fire, facing the door, was sour, and she wasn’t fool enough to look too close at the cleanliness of the tankard.

No one came in after her, and nothing seemed to come of the two drunks who stumbled out into the night while she was drinking. When she finished her ale and poked her head out of the door the street was dark and quiet and the door of the old Imbel place was shut.

She was still holding the boots. She hadn’t set them down, even while she was drinking, in case someone made a grab for them or she had to dash, and it felt like the grain of the leather was going to be permanently embossed into her hand.

The one ale she’d had sat heavy in her stomach, but she still would have rather ordered another than gone back to face Tom, even with his precious boots.

But in many ways she was more afraid of him than of the vampires, and she knew he didn’t like to wait.

* * *

“Wait—”

The men beside her grabbed her under each arm, an excessive show of force considering her size and theirs. The one on her right pressed his hand over her mouth. She thought about trying to bite him but he was still Shiny Tom’s man.

They’d taken the boots from her as soon as she’d entered but they’d brought her—and the boots—to Tom.

He’d hardly glanced at her after his man had carefully passed him his prize, cradling and examining them with a look of wide-eyed wonder.

“They’re real!” he murmured.

He sat, holding them carefully on his lap, already working his own right boot off.

His distracted gaze fell on her, pinned between his patient men, and he frowned, as if annoyed that she was still there. He didn’t stop working on his boot, or change his grip on the ones she’d brought him, though setting them down would only have made it easier for him. “Take her picks and her weapons and toss her in with the orc, for now. We’ll decide what to do with them in the morning.”

“You said we’d get to gut the pig-man. After Iber had his fun,” the man on her left said.

She tried to grunt a protest through the other man’s dirty hand but the taste and stench of him was already making her light-headed. If she didn’t keep her mouth closed she was afraid she might vomit. And they’d probably just let her choke on it.

“Tomorrow,” Tom said sharply, finally really looking at her, smug now, and coldly amused. “Let them have their last night. She faced down a pack of vampires for him after all.”

She stopped struggling. The way his men were holding her hurt and the smell of the one who was covering her mouth was making her head spin. Away from Tom was better. Being off his mind was better.

They took her back down to the empty jewelry shop, to that heavy trap door in the corner.

“No screaming—the boss don’t like it,” the one with his hand over her mouth said, before removing it. She took a deep, desperate breath, trying to clear her head, but didn’t say a word. He released her arm, though the other man grabbed it before she could have done anything even if she’d been ready to try, holding her by both arms so his odorous cohort could frisk her.

It could have been worse than it was: at least he was brisk and impersonal, but he was also thorough and probably experienced: he did indeed find all her picks, her purses, her three daggers, and even her precious ring, Sheor take him. The only thing he missed was the cowl, soft and flat in the hidden pocket of her stiff leather jerkin. The orc would have found it. It was in the same pocket where that stupid stolen purse had been.

After that she was shoved ahead of them down the stairs to the cellar, only her practiced nimbleness keeping her from tumbling ass over ears to the bottom.

They unlocked the hidden door and pushed her in, slamming it without ceremony.

She sighed heavily, still out of breath from the one goon’s stench.

“You’re mad to have gotten tangled up with them,” the deep voice rumbled from the darkness, chiding. She couldn’t suppress a shiver. “You had to know this sorry lot wouldn’t let you go.”

He’d seen her and he recognized her.

She rubbed at her arms. “They still haven’t said they’re going to kill _me_ ,” she answered honestly.

This time he sighed. “Right.”

* * *

She wished she had her ring. She’d had only a brief view of the room in the light from Tom’s spell earlier.

What little she’d been able to see had looked bare, and the orc still sounded to be sitting on the ground, against the wall, but she was disoriented in the dark and didn’t know how far she was from the walls, or from him, or even from the door, for all its faint halo of light from the cellar.

She held her arms out, needing only one stiff step forward until she brushed the far wall with her fingertips. It was basically a closet. “And you’re one to talk. What in Oblivion were you doing hassling one of Shiny Tom’s gang, anyway? Talk about mad. Were you trying to get killed?”

“What difference does it make to you, little thief?”

She huffed. He didn’t even know what she’d done to try to get him out. Idiot. And the kindest thing he could say was to call her ‘thief.’

“You’re a madman,” she grumbled, honestly not sure which of them that was directed at.

“I’m a guard,” he corrected, with a hint of stern pride. “It’s my job to confront lawbreakers.”

“Tom’s above the law. He bought it out years ago,” she said. By his voice, she’d found him, and she sank down, sliding her hand along the wall until she’d settled herself.

“No one’s above the law.”

He sounded so obstinate she had to smile. She’d heard stronghold orcs had a somewhat simpler view of society than the human races. Honor supposedly meant something to them. Honesty, too. Malacath’s kin were a strange bunch. 

“Being on the wrong side of the law didn’t save you,” he said, after a moment. “How’d you end up here?”

“Bad luck.”

“Bad luck that you ended up inside one of his hideouts?”

She scoffed. “He doesn’t have to hide; did you not hear what I said? Everyone knows how to find Tom, especially your friends in the guard. How’d they be able to kiss his ass otherwise?” Maybe it was a cruel dig, but she didn’t think he believed her and he really should have.

“Then I ask again, how did you end up on his bad side?”

She wasn’t sure she was. Tom was mercurial but not usually subtle. “It doesn’t matter.”

But she felt guilty when he made a disbelieving sound and stopped pressing her. “I suppose it doesn’t,” he grumbled. “The only thing that matters is getting you out of here before they come back.”

A sweet idea. As if you could run from Tom. “They took my picks—and the trapdoor from the cellar to the shop is barred on the shop side. Neither of us is going anywhere until they come for us.”

To her surprise, he chuckled, though it was a weary sound that made her wonder how long he’d been down there and whether anyone had thought to give him anything to eat or drink. “So unobservant, little thief? There’s a window.”

They’d taken his armor but she could hear the whisper of his underclothes as he stood.

“A window?” Shiny Tom and his men wouldn’t have been that careless. But she levered to her feet as well, straining her eyes to find it in the darkness around them. Her heart sank when she finally did catch sight of the two small smudges of paler black, far above, where the regular city darkness watched them. More like vents than windows; maybe their cell had been a fireplace once.

What was he playing at, getting her hopes up? “That’s no way out,” she muttered. “Too small and too high.”

“Not too small for you.”

…He’d meant it, when he’d said ‘getting _you_ out’ was what mattered?

“They’re too high…” Her voice was sharp, she almost didn’t recognize it herself.

“Not if you’re up on my shoulders.”

Damn him, what sort of man was this fucking selfless? “Then what about you?”

She could sense his shrug.

“You expect me to just leave you?” Idiot orc.

That stopped him for a moment. “Yes. Why not?”

And she still couldn’t answer it, but fine, if he was this determined to be a martyr, she wouldn’t get in the way of his sainthood. He wasn’t wrong: this was all his fault anyway, and there was no reason for her to pay for it.

“Fine,” she said, through gritted teeth.

* * *

It was an awkward thing, in the dark, trying to get up onto his shoulders. Shiny Tom’s men had left her with her armor, probably because her fate was still to be settled, and Tom was likely to have more business for her, but everywhere she touched her companion it was bare skin, or at best, warm, hard flesh under a covering of soft linen.

Even so, it only took a moment, with his help, to get her booted feet up on his shoulders, his head between her ankles, so she could reach the stupid little windows, and windows they did turn out to be. They still looked tiny, but a fully grown Breton woman didn’t have much to boast of her size, and Spar had always been on the small side, even among her own people.

She’d just assumed those windows would be fixed in place, nailed or painted shut, but to her surprise, when she tested the one he’d boosted her up to, the bottom frame slid up with only a little wiggling and a little finesse. At least she wouldn’t have to break it, possibly alerting Tom’s men and showering the orc in a rain of glass shards.

Inhaling and then exhaling deeply, trying to imagine herself as skinny as possible, she grabbed the outside frame and heaved herself up and through it, the orc pushing at her feet from below to give her leverage. She could sidle her shoulders through and that and the stiff leather that slightly constrained her breasts got her out as far as her belly, giving her a moment to rest it on the window sill before the last push.

There was a moment where she thought her hips might do her in and she spared a brief thought to leaving her pants, with their pockets and bulk, but the orc reached up and pushed at her feet again, giving her enough unmoving resistance at the right angle for her to push off and force her hips through the opening and then it was easy and she was free.

She curled her legs under her for a moment, looking around the dark little courtyard garden she’d crawled into. When she was sure it was clear she turned back to the window, and quietly, carefully slid it closed. She wouldn’t let herself look down to see if she could still see him; she knew she wouldn’t be able to.

But damned if she was just going to leave him there.


	5. Chapter 5

Tom had her ring. So what? That they’d taken all her picks was a bigger issue but it didn’t take her ten minutes to get her hands on more and circle back to the jewelry shop.

It was nearing dawn, even reprobates like Tom and his crew would have had to started thinking about their beds by now. She knew exactly how the shop was set up, at least as far as the cellar and its hidden prison, she was sure she could make it that far. She was less sure _he’d_ be able to make it back as quietly, big brute that he was, but trying was better than leaving him.

She had to wait for the patrolling city guards to pass before she could make for the front door of the jewelry shop, since they actually did patrol in this part of town and she didn’t have the orc’s confidence that they’d have had any sympathy for her situation or his.

The shop had several good locks, but her skill with a pick was better. It took her long enough that another guard had made his way around and she had to break for the shadows before she could let herself in, chaffing at the further waste of time while she waited impatiently for him to pass, cursing all guards everywhere.

When she finally stood inside the shop again, she found the whole first floor dark, with no lights lit and very little spillover from the streetlights outside, through barred windows that were cut more like arrowslits. She sighed.

She hadn’t had much sentimental attachment, to her old ring or her family, but it had been useful in dark corners of the city, to say nothing of darkened houses where she had no business asking for a friendly light to be left on.

She thought of the only thing that earlier frisking had left her, that strange hood, folded up in her hidden pocket, next to the one where her ring should be, with its runes and the dim pulse of a magic she didn’t recognize. She hadn’t tried it on yet. There was a chance whatever its enchantment was could be useful—and it wasn’t like narrowing her view to the eyeholes of the hood would do much damage when she couldn’t see anyway.

Listening for any sound from the floors above, she pulled out the leather hood and ran it through her fingers. It… _tingled_ , making her palm prickle at the unknown magic on it. It didn’t feel dangerous. She wasn’t completely ignorant of sorcery, she was a Breton, and that family she’d happily left behind had all been mages. She was almost sure she’d have recognized it if the thing had something dangerous on it.

Even in the near perfect darkness, somehow the strange runes reflected a light she otherwise couldn’t see. As she held it up for one moment they pulsed faintly blue, a subdued flash along the dark gray leather, that faded back to darkness, and no matter how she held it she couldn’t get them to catch that light again.

But what did she have to lose? Before she could think better of it she pulled the hood on, surprised by how quickly it fell into place and how well it fit, the eye holes sliding into position without any effort of hers, letting her see—the nothing that there was to see in the darkness. No night eye enchantment then.

She blinked though, because it did seem there was suddenly a pale smear of light before and a bit above her. Several horizontal bars lit in a faint, shimmering pink, that she could somehow tell weren’t in the room with her. The vague shape was familiar. Humanoid. Like bodies—or sleeping men.

Detect Life, then, and a good distance on it too. It wouldn’t have been her choice.

She turned slowly, still in the dark herself, but above she could clearly see the prone forms of the sleeping men, and below her, the curled, sitting shape that she imagined was the orc.

Caught in the newness of it, she found that although she couldn’t ‘see’ a foot in front of her face, she could tell that there was a rat’s nest down somewhere in the cellar, and she could even count the small pink sparks of spiders in their webs throughout the shop and apartments above.

She still would have liked to have her ring so she could be sure she didn’t trip over something and break her neck, or worse, alert Tom and his men that she was here again, not in the locked basement where they’d left her, but this could be useful.

Feeling along the wall, careful where she put her feet, she followed her mental map back towards the orc.

She’d been worried about the heavy trap door down from the shop, past the maze of jewelry display cases. She’d seen the bar across it and the effort it had taken Tom’s burly men to heave it out of the way. As tidy as the cellar was, they must keep someone on hand to open it, or that spindly-armed shop girl could never have gotten down there.

Spar wasn’t sure she’d be able to lift it herself.

And yet, when she managed to wedge the crossbar out of its cradle she found lifting it was much easier than unseating it had been. Confusingly easy. Unsettled, she lightly touched the leather over her cheek, wondering if she’d imagined the way cowl had seemed to twitch under the stiff, stitched runes.

The trap door itself felt as if it weighed almost nothing, a thing of pressed paper rather than sturdy wooden planks.

One lantern had been left burning in the cellar and she was grateful for the light as she descended. The pink glow of the rats and spiders and even the orc was harder to see in the natural light of the lantern’s fire. More importantly, she didn’t see anything else that looked close enough to be in this building and not one of it’s surrounding ones or the sewers below.

It was disturbing to see so many smears of light around her though, so many lives, so many potential enemies.

She took the cowl off and tucked it into her pocket, breathing in relief.

She’d already unlocked the hidden door earlier, it was only easier the second time.

“Who’s there?” he whispered, a moment after the door eased open.

“Who do you think?” she whispered back, twisting for a quick glance at the stairs to the shop, making sure no one had woken and followed her.

“Little thief?” He cursed in Orsimer.

She recognized the tone and could guess at the meaning, but she only managed an annoyed sigh. “Just c’mon, would you?”

She heard him get to his feet, linen rustling. He wasn’t moving fast enough though, so she reached out to grab his arm, pulling him out into the cellar.

They had to move quickly if they were going to avoid being caught and it shouldn’t have made her skin tingle the way it did, even if she could practically taste the danger on the air.

Halfway to the stairs he suddenly set his feet and resisted, forcing her to stop. Her impatient glare made no impact on his own narrow-eyed stare or the stubborn set of his jaw.

“Why are you doing this?”

Mara’s mercy, he didn’t know half of what she’d done tonight. She released his arm since she couldn’t drag him along if he wasn’t willing anyway and she felt foolish holding onto him now that she could see him. He’d seemed massive sitting against the wall of his cell in the light of Tom’s spell, but he was enormous now, standing next to her, shirtless, all muscle and suspicion and mer-ish height.

She looked away first. And then started walking. “Does it matter? Call it returning the favor,” she muttered.

“If you’re working with that dung-pile—”

She sneered. At least he’d fallen in behind her, not as quiet as she’d have liked, but he was moving again. “Tom doesn’t need tricks and he’d bait a trap with better than me.”

Moving up from the celler, however dimly lit it had been, into the shop was like slapping on a blindfold. She hesitated at the top of the stairs, feeling for the layout of the floor before she stepped up to it. Her heart pounded. She couldn’t make out the door—without the ring her night vision was poor, she suspected the orc was better off than she was—but she knew they were close.

An incautious, foolish part of her wanted to run. But, _Haste will kill you_ , the wiser part of her warned, a familiar refrain.

Nervous, she put the cowl back on, even knowing it wasn’t half as useful as her ring. It was probably better than nothing.

The orc stepped up behind her, his naturally heavier footfall making her wince and look nervously up at all those prone forms sleeping on the floors above them.

“Come—” she whispered, hoping he could see well enough to follow her.

She struck out carefully. Picking her way through a dark room wasn’t exactly a unique experience for her either, even if her ring had spoiled her. It wasn’t like she didn’t remember how it was done.

Every forward step was careful. Her hands swept the air in front of her, methodical and delicate. When she made contact with something, she stilled. Her fingertips slid over smooth glass and she recognized she’d walked into one of the heavy jewelry display cases and corrected her course.

“Careful,” she warned, softer than his footsteps behind her. His noise was distracting but it wasn’t as bad as she’d feared. He was no thief but he wasn’t a complete lost cause at sneaking. She wondered if he’d had any experience in the Legion.

But then the _crash_ , metallic, and a skittering off across the floor, and a loud bang against a distant wall or furniture—followed by a muttered orcish expletive. What had he kicked? What the hell had he found to kick?

She swept her arm behind her, catching his wrist. He gripped her hand and she jerked him forward. She checked above them—pink shapes were stirring, morphing, as the sleepers sat up in alarm.

_Now_ was the time for haste.

She leapt forward, dragging him in her wake. They’d be across the room before anyone on the upper floors got down to them. Another damned display case blocked her way and it took her a precious moment to get around it, but it was only a moment, they’d still reach the door well before anyone else did.

But there was a sound behind and above her—strange— _tap tap… tap tap…_ from the stairs to the upper floors—

Something landed lightly in front of her, _tap tap_ , between her reaching hand and the front door. A wash of pink overtook the world.

She staggered back but the orc caught her, solid against her back.

 “And what do we have—” Shiny Tom broke off with a gasp as his mage-light spell suddenly illuminated the room. The hood protected her from the sudden light a little, enough for her to see he was wearing those ridiculous heeled boots she’d brought him, as ugly on him as they’d been in the hole with the mask.

He hadn’t been expecting her, she could tell that instantly, even before he continued, breathless. “You—impossible!”

Maybe. Blindingly stupid, certainly. She took advantage of his unexpected shock at finding them escaping—he wouldn’t know she’d already escaped and broken back in, why was their breakout so unexpected?—to throw herself, shoulder-first into him, knocking him off his feet. Her bony elbow hit his lower chest hard, just where she’d aimed, her arm only aching a little from using basically the same trick to knock over the stacks of coffins onto that orc vampire earlier.

His breath escaped him on a rasping _woosh_ and she didn’t dally this time either.

“Come _on!_ ” she grunted at the orc, sliding away before Tom could helplessly fold over, taking her with him.

“Gray Fox—” she heard Tom whisper but there wasn’t time to play games. Her body hit the door a second after her hand touched the handle and it flew open and she was through it in an instant, not waiting for Tom to recover or his men to catch up to him or even for the orc. She could only do so much, he had to get his own ass moving at some point.

He caught her arm before she was more than a pace beyond the house, and before he was even fully out of it. It was blind luck they hadn’t barged right out into another patrol. “You—”

They didn’t have time for his silly quibbling either. He could thank her or scold her or whatever he thought he was about after they’d put more distance between themselves and Tom.

“Later,” she hissed, grasping at his arm again and using it to pull him along. Maybe there had been something to Tom’s stupid boots: they’d gotten him from his bed to them in a far shorter time than they should have and she was afraid they’d get him to them even more quickly out in the open air. She wasn’t up for waiting around to see.

They ducked down the first dark side street, startling a skooma-head who blinked up at her with wide, frightened eyes. Who knows what the poor sot saw in his drug-haze. There was another alley at the end of that one. It cut both ways, north and south; going south, and then east, they came to a dead end, the back of a pawn shop that didn’t ask too many questions and had a good reputation among the sorts of people who had very bad reputations.

The owner paid his dues to Tom, like everyone else in the city, though. She didn’t think for a second she’d find any help there.

Instead she dropped to her knees and dug her fingers in around the manhole cover. The ancient sewers were a stinking, crumbling refuge for the beggars and street kids who didn’t have any other shelter above ground, and it had done for her before. She didn’t remember it being so easy to maneuver the old manhole covers though.

As soon as she’d lifted it free and set it aside she was already sliding down the iron loops that had served as a ladder back when the council had actually sent people down there to do repairs. “Pull the cover back after you,” she said, leaving it up to him to follow or not.

She waited for him at the bottom, impatient, but not sure he would follow, and she didn’t even start to relax until he’d dutifully closed the manhole and climbed carefully down the slick old iron rungs.

Unable to contain herself she burst out in relieved laughter as his bare feet touched the ground. Even if Tom figured out where they’d gone, he wouldn’t lower himself to following them down here, and his men, without those enchanted boots, would be much slower to catch up.

They’d made it.

The orc turned slowly and looked at her oddly. It killed her laughter and her relief, how strange his expression was. Like the addict they’d passed. Like Tom. Instinct had her backing away but he reached out and caught her wrist.

It didn’t feel companionable or friendly. It felt a little like that iron shackle again, the way he’d gripped her when he’d caught her with her hand halfway in that merchant’s pocket.

“What are you—”

The blaze of fury in his eyes startled her, cutting off her words.

“Gray Fox!” he hissed, his face drawn in hard lines, his jaw flexing. He jerked her closer, nearly pulling her off her feet. She stumbled against him, but it pissed her off. She didn’t let anyone manhandle her—and she hadn’t thought he was the type, with his high and mighty orcish honor. The betrayal, after all she’d done, made her throat burn.

“What the hells are you doing?” she snarled, trying to push away from him, but he wasn’t letting go and she wasn’t strong enough to pull free.

His voice was low and dangerous and it made her shiver. “It’s time you faced justice, thief—”

With her free hand she reached for the hood and ripped it off, so she could glare at him without that damned pink haze, though it left her more exposed as she blinked away tears. “That’s the thanks I get for freeing you?” she demanded. She was sweaty under the hood. She could pretend it was sweat in her eyes.

He released her so suddenly she almost fell, except for one immediately outthrust hand and her own reflexive grab at it to catch her balance. They both pulled away as soon as she was standing and he—he looked embarrassed, but confused, and his gaze skipped around her not with guilt but as though he was searching the shadows for something.

She glared down at the hood in her hand as she folded it up with deliberate, jerky motions.

“I— I—” He shook his head, like he’d been kicked. “Someone else was here.”

“There’s no one else here,” she said, but she thought she was starting to get it. She tucked the hood away. “Who else would be down here?”

“Not down here—”

“Anyway! …We’re out. Past Tom and his men. You’re welcome. _Guard_.” She sneered the last word, echoing his own tone of a moment before. Hood or no, he hadn’t been wrong naming her a thief.

He shook his head again, and rubbed his temple, his gaze still wary on the shadows, if also somewhat hazy.

“Urimmok. Gro-Ghunzug.”

She smiled a little, but she knew there was still an edge to it. Even if it had maybe not been his fault, the way he’d turned on her, she wasn’t forgiving him yet; and she kept her distance. She was still a thief and an honorable guard would be no friend to her kind. “Uri, then,” she said.

He made a face. Oh, definitely Uri.

But he didn’t argue. He didn’t stop rubbing at his head, either. “Why did you come back? You were already out.”

She wondered how he was making sense of it, if he knew it was her who’d gotten him out in the dark, and her standing in the dim light now, but thought that it had been someone else somehow, in between.

She shrugged. “It didn’t seem fair. I wouldn’t have made it out without your help. It didn’t seem right just leaving you there, after.”

He smiled a little, wearily, and finally dropped his hand. “Honor among thieves, after all?”

There was no acid in his tone but the words still stung. “More than among the city guard. I wouldn’t go back to them if I were you. Shiny Tom owns them. You’re not safe from him with them. He’ll still want his own back, more now, since we broke out.”

He frowned. “That’s not true.”

Gods preserve her from fools. “You know it is. Even you can’t be that naïve.”

His eyes narrowed at the insult. “I know my brothers-in-arms. There may be a few bad apples but the guard is true. They’ll have my back against some street thug, however well connected.”

She scoffed. “You’re mad.”

“And you’re cynical for one so young.”

She rolled her eyes.

He was feeling better though and crossed his arms. “You never told me what you were doing there in the first place, little thief. Not that I’m not grateful for the hand in getting out—but what’s your angle?”

“Angle?” it was impossible not to be annoyed. He was watching her, suspicious now. She could feel the judgment. Thief and thief and thief again, it was all he saw when he looked at her.

“Maybe I was just curious about a guard who was pretending to be so honorable. Maybe I just wanted to find out _your_ angle—which would never happen if I let Tom kill you.”

He flat out laughed, shaking his head.

She felt cold but she tried to control her glare.

“You’re trying too hard, little thief. And I’m not tempted by children.”

“I’m twenty-six!” she blurted without thinking, insulted down to her bones. And it was only worse when the amused look of condescension faded slightly into embarrassment, because it was clear he hadn’t been _trying_ to insult her.

He really had thought she was a kid. All this time.

Fuck her.

“Ah—” His eyes widened. He understood.

Lord of Laughter, she felt like she was about two inches tall. No one, since she’d run away from her family, had left her feeling so humiliated. She didn’t even want to know how old he’d actually taken her for. No wonder he’d been so forgiving when he’d caught her pickpocketing: he hadn’t been interested, he’d thought she was one of the street kids.

She turned away and started down the stairs into the sewers proper. The only reason they were standing in torchlight down here, instead of in the dark, was because beggars, street kids, and cutthroats still used the tunnels, foul-smelling as they were. If she didn’t want to run into any—and she didn’t—then it was better she start moving.

“With humans— I mean… It’s just hard… to—”

“Don’t. Finish.” She didn’t look back. “Just get out of here. Wait for a while, it’s nearly sunrise and it should be as clear as it’ll ever be for you to crawl back up.”

 She did wheel around to give him a look, safe at the bottom of the stairs. Her head knocked up with pride. “I’m serious though: get out of town, don’t go back to the guard. You may as well go right back to Tom otherwise.” She could tell he still didn’t believe her. Arrogant bastard. “Or do what you want. No reason to take some _kid’s_ word, is there?”

He winced, but she knew she hadn’t changed his mind.

Anyway, she had other things to think about now than a stupid, handsome orc.

She waved to him, mocking, and ducked down the nearest dark tunnel.


	6. Chapter 6

She hated the sewers, but she’d spent a good deal of time here when she’d first come to the Imperial City. It was really your only option when you didn’t have so much as a septim to your name or a single friend to call on. The streets above were open to the sky, the weather, the city guard, and Tom’s men. Down here you only had to dodge the other desperates and as long as you looked as bad off as the rest of them, you were mostly okay.

Her gear was much better than it had been, even without her ring and weapons, and she didn’t look so bad off anymore. It was much more dangerous for her to be down here, these days.

She dropped into a crouch and started making her way more carefully, now that she was out of sight of that damned—

She wasn’t even going to let herself think about him. She had to focus.

She still remembered the way. Having a head for directions was a necessity. If you didn’t have it, you developed it, quick. Above ground or below, wandering into the wrong part of the city was worth your head.

She knew the closest entrance to the Green Way, and it was only a short hop from there to Black Drake Road and Idhasa—

“Who’s there?” A voice hissed from around the corner.

Y'ffre’s song.

She hurried as quietly as she could back the way she’d come but light suddenly flooded the tunnel and a small pack of feral street kids filled it. No point pretending they couldn’t see her. The girl in the lead grinned and brandished her daggers. Long, sharp at the points but not particularly along the blades. Stickers, the kids called weapons like that.

Mostly teens down here, the girl in the lead looked like Kae might look in a few years. In a way, she was Kae’s future self.

Spar could have run, and hoped she was faster than them. It was possible. Or…

She reached for her hidden pocket and swore she heard one of the kids in the back _growl_. Doing up the feral thing a little bit too much.

“It’s okay,” she said softly, addressing the one in the front, who watched her every move, hard-eyed. “You can tell I’m no mage, right? Just a thief on the run. No better than you. I used to live down here—”

“Then you know you have to pay your dues.”

“Exactly! Exactly, right? You’ll want me to turn out my pockets? That’s all I’m doing…”

One of the kids behind the lead girl had a fucking bow and arrow trained on her, like she wasn’t nervous enough. They weren’t doing so bad for themselves these days either, it looked like. 

She pulled out the hood.

“That some kinda money pouch?” the lead girl asked, suspicious.

“Something like it,” she said softly—and pulled it on, just before the boy with the bow could let fly.

For a moment none of them moved, like they were frozen, then something, a ripple in still water, seemed to pass over the whole crowd of them.

She watched the lead girl’s face change, hard, pinched young featured flashing joy and a wonder that edged on pain. Like Spar from the gutters, Spar, the outcast from her family and her province, had turned into an avatar of Blessed Lady Mara herself.

“The Gray Fox!” one of the boys in the back whispered first, sounding as young as any of the little ones in Kae’s court above ground.

“It’s the Gray Fox!”

“She’s here!”

“She’s real!”

“The Gray Fox has come for us!”

And somehow it was worse than the orc. A sinking feeling in her stomach. A blow to the heart. For a moment, there was a sense of expectation, of destiny.

The girl in the lead had put away her weapons and she wasn’t the only one of the young street-toughs-in-training who had tears in their eyes.

“I… Yeah. I’m back!” Spar said, and the ragged band of children cheered and started bouncing around the sewer like she really was some long-lost hero returned to them.

Her heart lodged in her throat. Her plan had been the same she’d suggested to the orc: she’d been going to warn Idhasa about Tom and skip town. There was a war going on in Skyrim but it was better than staying in the Imperial City if Shiny Tom was out for her blood. Or maybe she could have looked up some of Idhasa’s kin in Elsweyr, her friend had offered it before.

But what was she supposed to do about this?

* * *

She let herself into the apartment house on Black Drake Road, shaky and exhausted, and not just because she’d been awake for a full day and night. Her key to the flat was gone, but it wasn’t like she really needed it.

Idhasa was already up, tea steeping on the fire, boar meat cut with onions and bread waiting their turn, all to break the night’s fast for her children. She watched Spar’s dragging steps with curious, but un-alarmed eyes.

Her little ones would still be asleep, tucked up in the bed of sheets and blankets they shared with her on the floor of the small bedroom. Spar slept there too, since the generous Khajiit had opened her home, and she’d been paying half the rent for her piece of floor for the past three years.

For a moment she only looked at her friend. There were too many things to say and she wasn’t sure how to start. Finally she reached into her jerkin for the mask and tossed it at the ground between them.

Idhasa, sitting cross-legged on the rug by the fire, picked it up and carefully unfolded it. The blue runes flashed and the Khajiit softly gasped.

“I have a problem,” Spar said.


End file.
